Publications

This autumn’s busy negotiation agendas, offer a window of opportunity to move the reform of the international climate finance architecture (IFA) up one level. This acceleration is urgent if we want to keep pace with the dramatic change in scale needed to finance the climate transition.  In 2023, developed countries announced that they had - for the first time since 2009 - achieved their USD 100bn/year climate finance target to support climate action in developing countries. Just two years later, this target is already obsolete, with needs for emerging and developing economies (excluding China) estimated at around USD 2.4 trillion per year by 2030. 

Directing more wood towards long-life products such as panels and insulation materials can help us maximise carbon sinks without increasing forest harvests. That’s because these products store carbon for a longer periods of time in form of long-lasting construction and renovation materials. But for this to happen in practice, more market opportunities and production capacity are needed. How can public policies help?

Assessing the economic implications of climate policies is essential for steering public action. Sig­nificant progress has been achieved in assessing the costs of mitigation, particularly with the publication in 2023 of the report on the economic implications of climate action. However, as the Cour des Comptes noted in its 2024 annual public report, numerous issues surrounding adaptation continue to emerge. Our recent work has nev­ertheless enabled us to draw five initial conclusions on the subject.

The recent election campaign in France didn’t give priority to the climate and environment. However, taking climate action is still widely supported by the French voters and most decision-makers. But a mandate to act is not enough. To make up for the current shortfall in climate investment, we need a solid consensus on the financial resources to be deployed to the climate transition in the long term. Today, these resources come partly from public budgets. And it is not a secret that the public contribution probably will have to increase in the future.

Ursula Von der Leyen’s competitiveness agenda is grabbing headlines - but the hard work of climate implementation and investment is only just beginning. In this blog, Ciaran Humphreys and Dorthe Nielsen outline the challenges this era of implementation poses, and how to align climate ambition with the President’s economic vision.  Ursula Von der Leyen has been re-elected as Commission President – and by a wider margin than expected. Before the vote, she set out her political priorities for the next EU mandate. Her vision focused on themes of security, economic competitiveness, and enlargement – unsurprisingly so at a time when the EU is increasingly concerned about its place in the world. 

France is facing a climate investment deficit relative to its climate objectives. Today, these investment are already putting a strain on public finances, whether in terms of investing in public facilities or co-financing projects by households and business. Increasing climate investments is therefore a challenge for public finances. But the scale of the challenge varies, depending on future policies. So what room for manoeuvre is there in terms of climate-related public spending needs?

Following the European elections on June 9, the EU is adapting to a new, more conservative, political reality. Yet despite changing political tides, a new EU leadership will still need to find a credible answer to how the continent is to reach climate neutrality by 2050. To understand how to get there, we need a clear understanding of the progress already made. This is where the European Climate Neutrality Observatory (ECNO) comes in.

Attention is growing to the need to tackle climate and social issues jointly. Indeed, both climate change and climate policies affect social issues such as poverty, inequality, or access to healthcare. A well-known example is that of carbon pricing, a climate policy which can have regressive effects in some contexts. As another example, climate change induced heatwaves are disproportionately likely to impact poorer individuals who typically have more constrained access to healthcare, physical jobs in outdoor conditions, and through indirectly driving up food prices. To foster an effective and sustainable transition to low-carbon and resilient economies, policymakers need to ensure individuals do not lose more from climate policies than they already lose from the effects of climate change, but instead benefit from them.

Options for Public Development Banks. Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, several public development banks (PDBs) have responded with structured approaches to align their operations with the Agreement’s expectations (as described in Section 1). However, many PDBs, particularly those in emerging markets and developing economies, are yet to adopt an approach to align with the Paris Agreement (i.e., Paris alignment). As entities whose investment mandates are established by the Parties to the Paris Agreement (i.e., national governments), PDBs have specific obligations derived directly from these Parties’ commitments to act across all policy and regulatory frameworks under their jurisdictions, including for state-owned or state-mandated institutions and agencies. Accordingly, PDBs are expected to operate in a manner that supports the achievement of the Paris goals. More specifically, they are obligated to integrate their activities within the Agreement’s implementation mechanism by providing financial, technical, and capacity building support that is entirely consistent with national low-emission climate-resilient development pathways.

Assessing the state of progress to inform next steps in policy-making. The European Union (EU) is on its journey to become climate neutral by 2050. This multigenerational project holds many societal, economic, and environmental opportunities. At the same time, it is of unprecedented scale and implies considerable changes to the current systems, which need to be anticipated and addressed for the transition to be fair and acceptable to all. Regular progress checking is the key to understanding where the EU stands on the journey. It allows to identify challenges and opportunities and take targeted policy action guiding investment, supply, consumption, and societal development. There is still no official, comprehensive, and regular EU-wide progress monitoring to achieve this. This second ECNO progress check aims to close the current information gap. It provides a comprehensive view on the state of EU progress towards climate neutrality and identifies key areas of action for the next policy cycle.

Private financial institutions must rethink their approach to managing stranded asset risks. The current narrative on quantifying fossil fuel sector exposures within a limited scope of financial portfolios (mostly loans) largely underestimates potential stranding losses. As the low-carbon transition impacts all economic sectors, private financial institutions (FIs) must consider material transition-driven stranding risks within their overall transition risk management framework using a ‘whole of economy’ lens. Traditional risk management approaches are ill-suited to the methodological and quantification challenges of transition-driven stranding risks, so a flexible, dynamic, forward-looking approach is necessary. Strong, incentivising public policy coordinated with financial regulatory and supervisory impetus is necessary to preemptively identify, monitor and manage stranding losses on ‘assets-at-risk’ (i.e., potential stranded assets). The ECB finds that 40% of the total loan portfolio of euro area banks is exposed to energy-intensive sectors*, making them vulnerable to transition risks, including stranding. It is time for an urgent reframing of the stranded asset narrative to avoid significant financial losses (endangering financial stability) and direct orderly transition finance flows to retire or transform assets-at-risk before they become fully stranded.

La transition vers une France décarbonée n’est pas un chemin facile, et requiert des ménages une implication et des investissements à court terme. Cela peut nourrir un rejet de ces politiques. Face à la difficulté, faut-il faire machine arrière ou chercher une voie de passage suscitant une plus large adhésion ? Pour Benoît Leguet d'I4CE, c’est ce qui se joue dans la campagne pour les élections législatives, avec des partis qui font des propositions pour aider les classes moyennes et populaires à faire la transition, et d’autres qui sont tentés, en l’assumant ou non, de rejeter toute politique associée de près ou de loin au climat. Disons-le d’emblée : la deuxième voie est une impasse, dans laquelle les partis ne doivent pas s’engager.

Tense climate negotiations just ended in Bonn with limited progress on finance and the revised climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. During the opening ceremony of the sixtieth sessions of the subsidiary bodies (SB 60) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Simon Stiell –Executive Secretary– highlighted the need to “make serious progress on finance, the great enabler of climate action” and to aim for bolder, broader and inclusive third generation Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 3.0) that “can serve as blueprints to propel economies and societies forward and drive more resilience”.

This weekend, citizens across the EU head to the polls. Many expect a swing to the right, in stark contrast to the “green wave” of 2019. In Brussels, leaders are looking ahead to a five-year mandate dominated by questions of security and competitiveness.  In these turbulent times, what is the future of Europe’s flagship climate package, the Green Deal? The Green Deal and the Fit for 55 package gave us the regulatory framework – but implementation requires investment. I4CE's flagship EU Climate Investment Deficit report shows that climate spending must double to make the 2030 target achievable.

Last month, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Simon Stiell, stressed how important this and next year are for the achievement of the Paris Agreement and called for “a quantum leap in climate finance” ahead of the Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund. Indeed, with emissions required to peak before 2025, our window of opportunity is rapidly closing to keep 1.5°C within reach. More and better finance is urgently needed. Carbon pricing policies and their revenues are part of the tools available that can help fill the climate finance gap.

Carbon pricing policies and their revenues are part of the tools available that can help fill the climate finance gap. With raising revenues from carbon taxes and emission trading systems (ETSs) that have tripled since the Paris Agreement, and an upward trend that could continue in the medium-term, ‘how to use carbon revenues’ has become a crucial question. This report, prepared as an activity of the EU-funded European Union Climate Dialogues (EUCDs) project, aims to inform policymakers and practitioners on lessons learned and ways forward on the use of carbon revenues, with a comprehensive approach based on a review of international experiences.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) is clarifying how the banks should frame their “transition plan” as required by the EU prudential regulation. The transition plan is the bank’s strategic roadmap to prepare for the transition to a sustainable economy as framed by the jurisdictions they operate in, including an EU climate-neutral economy. It has been introduced in several EU regulatory frameworks, including as a disclosure requirement arising from the CSRD. The prudential framework and the EBA are focusing on a specific angle: how the banks plan to manage their financial risks related to the transition. EBA’s framing of these plans will be key to determine whether the banks will manage their financial risks consistently with the broader need of financing the transition to a low-carbon economy. 

Rethinking how development can be financed to take into account the rising challenges of our time is a fastidious task, especially when thousands of experts, decision makers and practitioners want to leave their print. The outline of the new international financial architecture is being debated again this week, with more questions open for discussion than consensus on the answers. 

Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, significant strides have been made to foster the commitment of countries and financial institutions to address the climate crisis and ensure that climate risks and opportunities are considered in investments. However, with emissions required to peak before 2025, our window of opportunity is rapidly closing to keep +1.5°C within reach. Financial needs to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to address adaptation priorities are increasing rapidly in the meantime. Luis Zamarioli Santos and Diana Cárdenas Monar, from I4CE, believe that commitment must urgently translate into action, and action must bring the urgent change the world needs. Both governments and public financial institutions have a central role to play to deliver more and better finance, maximising positive impacts. This blogpost highlights some opportunities to advance in the path for a systemic transformation, involving key stakeholders with a whole-economy approach.  

At the Spring Meetings, during an event with senior climate representatives from Multilateral Development Banks, I4CE, E3G, Germanwatch and NewClimate Institute officially launched a common position paper on what ambitous Paris alignment means for public development banks. This paper summarises years of research on Paris alignment to shed light on best practice and hopefully support decision makers in taking and implementing credible climate commitments.